


Compenso

by thecountessolivia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Autofellatio, Fine Italian clothing, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-06-30 03:32:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15743373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: For now, there are sartorial tableaux to be arranged. Hannibal retrieves the suits one by one: all single-breasted, all tapered at the waist, with unstructured shoulders. Unmistakably Italian and ideal for a certain type of build: slim, made to move quickly, with dangerous grace.





	1. Chapter 1

Hannibal receives the garment bag from the delivery man, and brings it upstairs and across his doorstep, cradled like a bride.

He carries it through the empty apartment. The weight of it is pleasant in his ams, an almost corporeal bulk that warms quickly. In the bedroom, he rests the bag on the brocade coverlet with infinite care.

He's waited four weeks for this. Now that the moment has arrived, he savours the blissful solitude that has come with it. She won't be back for some time. It's easy enough to send her off on long errands now that boredom, never quite dispelled with dinner party slaughter, has cobwebbed the corners of this once new life.

He unzips the bag slowly. The four suits inside were ordered from Liverano — not his own tailor, but a younger craftsman, more apt at producing the sharp, modern styles Hannibal had envisioned. The bespoke shirts, delivered earlier, are already arranged in a tidy stack on the bed, awaiting their more substantial complements.

Of course there are neckties too, still rolled in their velvet-lined box: glistening silk, delicately patterned, in colors lifted from a stormy ocean. But would they be welcome by their prospective wearer? Hannibal now doubts it. Would any of it be welcome? How would—

Hannibal quickly brushes such thoughts aside. These minutiae are for another time.

For now, there are sartorial tableaux to be arranged. Hannibal retrieves the suits one by one: jackets all single-breasted, all tapered at the waist, with unstructured shoulders. Unmistakably Italian and ideal for a certain type of build: slim, made to move quickly, with dangerous grace.

The deep blue cashmere suit is set out first, jacket pulled over the pale blue shirt with blue mother of pearl buttons, so very like certain eyes. That'll be ideal for the wet, cooler months, for long walks after the opera. The white cotton shirt and the slim trousers in soft Barberis wool — these will pair beautifully with the light in the Vasari corridor. The pepper grey shirt and the subtly pinstriped charcoal suit Hannibal sees as worthy of sacrifice to deliberate spatters of blood.

There is enough promise in these garments to sustain Hannibal for months to come. He expects — hopes — it will only be a matter of months.

His task done, he rewards himself with a glass of Barolo, clear like thinned blood, with a nose of smoke and autumn rose. He drinks deeply and examines his efforts.

Hazy, golden light pours itself over the bed. If he narrows his eyes, Hannibal can almost picture the two dimensional phantoms laid out before him fill with flesh. He pulls a cuff here, corrects a collar there. The arrangements are dynamic, as if flung lazily or toppled onto the mattress. Hannibal's knuckles bump over the white shirt, fingers slipping covetously between buttons — but finding only more cloth.   
  
The measurements were either estimated or stolen, but Hannibal has little doubt that the fit will be ideal. Still, he has to at least try. How would a garment shaped for another body sit on his own? Will he feel the constrains of the cut — too narrow at shoulder and waist — and feel himself change to accommodate it?

He sets the wine down and begins to divest himself of his shirt. Then he pauses, eyes catching on the garish plastic bag he brought back from a supermarket on the outskirts of town. 

The contents of the bottle inside, with its picture of a ship, are a bow wave of evocation. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you find one part of this chapter... not that plausible, see my note at the end

Hannibal closes the curtains, leaving only a thin blade of golden sunshine to slice through the ensembles spread out on the bed.

A sacramental ambience descends over the room. He strips himself bare and approaches the foot of the bed. He uncaps the bottle and begins the anointment of his favourite shirt — the white one. First, a dab to the cuffs and collar. Then the tag and its embroidered initials: W.G. At last, Hannibal himself, a wetted index finger progressing slowly along the collarbone, pausing at the suprasternal notch.

The smooth cotton of the shirt pours itself over his skin and cocoons him in a cloud of familiar scent. Hannibal does up two buttons, the ones over the heart. He breathes deeply against the expected restraint of a garment cut a smidgeon too small for his body. He feels himself change. His eyes slide closed.

The cologne is more than he'd bargained for. It's not the same, of course, not without the fevered chemistry that once mingled with it. On his own skin, it is alcoholic and harsh. Still, its crude accord floods the vestibules of Hannibal's mind and ushers him into rooms where memories flicker on gilded walls like frescoes assembled from shadows.

Behind his eyelids, Hannibal takes in the masterworks: a battered hand cared for; eyes met and locked over a feast hunted and shared; lips parted for doomed songbirds. He avoids the dark corners of the same rooms, still damp with stale tears and cluttered with regret.

He takes in those favoured moments and, as he often does, embellishes them with things that never came to pass.

Back then, he let the feeling inside him incubate, waiting to unfurl it against the scenic backdrop of Florence. It wasn’t to be.

And if he hadn't bided his time? How would have those bygone evenings progressed instead?

Eyes still closed, he smooths his hands down the sides of the shirt until they reach the bare skin of his thighs. Is he touching or being touched? Is this now, or what could have been? In any case, he’s no longer alone. A hand skims over his cock, half-hard between the open folds of the shirt. He sighs. There’s no going back from this rite.

“On the bed," says the clear voice in his head. “With your mouth open.”

He obeys the command. He makes space among the clothes, and lays himself down.

"I thought you might want me on my knees," he tells the room's silence.

The constraint of fabric over his chest bears a passing resemblance to the pressure of two straddling thighs. He strokes at their ghostly outlines, summons their strength and warmth from the air.

"To showcase your contrition?" the voice asks.

"My gratitude."

The voice in his head gets him harder. He reaches around the spectre sat on his chest and tugs at himself roughly until he's wet, until he can soak the fingers of his free hand in scent.

Hand back to his mouth, three sex-slicked fingers fold and file slowly into his mouth. He shuts his eyes and his lips tightly and sucks.

He empties and fills his throat in time to the rough strokes on his cock. He's leaking, unravelling fast. He imagines the breathless words above him, everything from demands to pleas to obscenities, all of them so welcome, all of them so needed.

"You're so good ... I knew you'd want this ... Come on, fuck, take it, deeper."

He stops, panting, and drops his arms to his sides. This simulacrum of suction is not enough. He'd gone this far to summon the scene — the clothes, the scent. He still craves sensation. The reality of being filled and used.

He sits up. He draws one leg up onto the bed. Then he bends down, deploying a trick of personal anatomy discovered in his youth, slowly neglected with advancing years.

It still works. A careful curving of his spinal column, and his tongue can flick out and reach the head of his cock. A few more inches down, and he can wrap his lips about himself.

"Nothing like the real thing, right?" the voice says.

Nothing like the real thing. A compensation.

He shoves the thought aside. Groaning, he sucks and laps hard at his small mouthful, and tries to lose himself. Over and over until is neck aches, until shocks of pleasure ripple up through his vertebrae and he spills into his own mouth and straight into the aftermath: the deafening silence of the room, the creaky spine compressing his heart, the tears sliding down to mix with drops of unswallowed semen.

He falls back on the bed, breathing hard, alone again, and gathers to himself in a futile embrace one of the suits, one of those empty phantoms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean.... [you know what I'm sayin'?](https://www.bruil.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Zoo-Magazine-52_Mads-Mikkelsen-Gebukt.jpg)


End file.
